New Women

An ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. Two years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands, only to discover a dense patch of hair on the back of her neck. In the mirror, her canines suddenly look sharper than she remembers. Her husband, who travels for work five days a week, casually dismisses her fears from faraway hotel rooms.

The folklore that has shaped our dominant culture teems with frightening female creatures. In our language, in our stories (many written by men), we underline the idea that women who step out of bounds - who are angry or greedy or ambitious, who are overtly sexual or not sexy enough - aren’t just outside the norm. They’re unnatural. Monstrous. But maybe, the traits we’ve been told make us dangerous and undesirable are actually our greatest strengths.

Paul Worthington just confessed to a murder that never happened. Magdalene Lynton died 40 years ago: a vivacious teenager who fell victim to a grotesque, accidental drowning. The coroner's office issued a verdict of death by misadventure and filed her case. The farming commune she'd lived within, splintered apart. Her body was left behind in a small, private cemetery encircled by acres of fallow ground. Until Paul Worthington confessed to her murder.

Del Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, its strong cups of coffee - and, now, a nationwide manhunt? Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff - thanks to her adorably meddlesome parents who nominated her - and she expects her biggest crime wave to involve an elderly flasher named Doug. But a teenage girl is missing, a kidnapper is on the loose, and all of this is reminding Sunshine why she left Del Sol in the first place.

Joyce Carol Oates, a queenpin of the noir genre, has brought her keen and discerning eye to the curation of an outstanding anthology of brand-new top-shelf short stories (and poems by Margaret Atwood!). While bad men are not always the victims in these tales, they get their due often enough to satisfy listeners who are sick of the gendered status quo, or who just want to have a little bit of fun at the expense of a crumbling patriarchal society. This stylistically diverse collection will make you squirm in your seat, stay up at night, laugh out loud, and inevitably wish for more.

Mia Ward is amazed to learn she has inherited her great-aunt Matilda’s thatched cottage in the tiny seaside village of Little Pondale - especially as Mia didn’t know she had a great-aunt. She’s even more astonished to discover she’ll inherit the place only if she actually lives there for one year. Mia’s a city girl at heart, not to mention she’s afraid of water, so the fact the cottage backs onto a sandy beach is not a bonus. When her best friend, Ella, and Ella’s brother, Garrick, offer to help her move and settle in, Mia decides to see this as a new beginning.

The new female manager’s encyclopedia - how to lead like a pro and spin teamwork into value, even with little experience! If you’ve been newly appointed to a managerial position with a few years of experience under your belt…you may struggle to get used to your peers calling you “boss”. However, it would help if you weren’t afraid to embrace leadership roles - you earned every right to excel, and your boss must have noticed something exceptional in you, so don’t downplay yourself.

Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is back, packing a whole lot of attitude. This time around, she's on the trail of Kenny Mancuso, a boy from the working-class burg of Trenton, New Jersey, who has just shot his best friend. Fresh out of the Army and suspiciously wealthy, Mancuso's also distantly related to Joe Morelli, a vice cop with questionable ethics, a libido in permanent overdrive, and a habit of horning in on Stephanie's investigations.

Lizzy Moon never wanted Moon Girl Farm. Eight years ago, she left the land that nine generations of gifted healers had tended, determined to distance herself from the whispers about her family’s strange legacy. But when her beloved grandmother Althea dies, Lizzy must return and face the tragedy still hanging over the farm’s withered lavender fields: the unsolved murders of two young girls, and the cruel accusations that followed Althea to her grave.

Wild, reckless, and fast. That's how I raced, until a fatal accident on the track ruined my riding career. I had no choice but to leave that life behind - at least, until now. My name is Logan Chandler, and I'm one of the best FBI agents in the country. When an old friend calls for help and winds up dead, I take matters into my own hands. In order to do that, I have to go back to my past. Back to the racetrack and to the one girl I never thought I'd see again: Kassidy Bennett.

Still looking for answers to explain her uncanny ability to see her dead ancestors, Abby shifts her focus to spiritualists, seers, and psychics of all kinds. Meeting them with an open mind - and a healthy dose of skepticism - she wants to know if any of them genuinely share her strange experiences or if they're simply conning gullible people. When she ventures into a series of "readings" given by area psychics, she makes a startling connection that defies even her wildest expectations.

In an incredibly male-dominated world, it’s crucial - now more than ever - to develop the necessary skills to become an effective leader and start demanding what you deserve. All you need are easy, proven skills and traits that will help you gradually develop your self-esteem, sharpen your trust, and hone your boundary-setting and communication skills.

Ruby Young's new Boston apartment comes with all the usual perks. Windows facing the brick wall of the next-door building. Heat that barely works. A malfunctioning buzzer. Noisy neighbors. A dead body on the sidewalk outside. And of course, a ghost. Since Cordelia Graves died in her apartment a few months ago, she's kept up her residency, despite being bored out of her (non-tangible) skull and frustrated by her new roommate. When her across-the-hall neighbor, Jake Macintyre, is shot and killed in an apparent mugging gone wrong outside their building, Cordelia is convinced there’s more to it.

As a clairaudient and angelic channel with over 30 years of experience, Linda West is a best-selling author and expert in the science of frequencies, manifesting, and the law of attraction. In her latest audiobook, she helps lovers of “the secret” to actually use the science of the law of attraction. It is full of real magic and real secrets, and you will get the practical and simple steps for using the law of attraction.

If there’s anything Susan Sheridan understands, it’s that things don’t always go as planned. From her divorce, to her move from Newark, to her cancer diagnosis, finally to Scott popping the question at the Sunrise Cove Inn’s New Year’s Party in front of all her closest family and friends. She never thought she’d find her way back to a love like this. Amanda prepares herself for the ride of her life as she plans a dream-wedding to Chris, a man she’s loved desperately for years. But there’s something off about him. Something that rears its ugly head as the January wedding date rolls near.

When Ada Calhoun found herself in the throes of a midlife crisis, she thought that she had no right to complain. She was married with children and a good career. So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too? Calhoun decided to find some answers. She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked.

Feeling burned-out by your business? Sick of the 'hustle and grind' culture of your industry? There's a better way. Get over your perfectionism, chill, and prosper! With her trademark humor and down-to-earth wisdom, money mindset coach Denise Duffield-Thomas shares the invaluable business and counterintuitive millionaire mindset lessons (no blood, sweat or tears necessary) that will set you on the path of abundance - without all the hard work.

She's back. For the two years she's been away at boarding school, and there was no word from her. Back when we lived in the same house, she used to cut me down during the day and then leave her door open for me at night. I was stupid then, but now I'm ready to beat her at her own game. I'm back. Two years and I can tell he still wants me, even if he acts like he's better than me. But I won't be scared away. Or pushed down. I'll call his bluff and fight back. That's what he wants, right?

Who gets to shape the narrative of our times? The current moment is a battle royale over that foundational power, one in which women, people of color, and non-straight people are telling other versions, and white people and men (and particularly, white men) are trying to hang onto the old versions and their own centrality. In Whose Story Is This?, Rebecca Solnit appraises what's emerging, why it matters, and what the obstacles are.

Miss Marigold Manners may be steeped in the etiquette of her old-money Boston family, but she is also an accomplished, modern woman and an avid student of archaeology who can handle any situation with poise. When the death of her parents leaves her too destitute to pursue her academic career and she receives a letter from a distant relative on Great Misery Island, Marigold decides she must do what any person of superior sense and greater-than-average curiosity would: she mounts her trusty bicycle and heads up the craggy, fog-shrouded coast of New England for a date with fate.